About helloChina
An honest read on relocating to Shanghai.
Built by a household that has actually made this move — twice, with school-aged kids — across two countries.
Why this exists
Built by a household that's made every move you're about to make.
helloChina is led by a founder who grew up across six cities in China — Xiamen, Changsha, Quanzhou, Guangzhou, Beijing, and Shanghai — finished high school in Canada, and graduated with a Math degree from the University of Waterloo. Years of running an export business out of China followed: shipping made-in-China goods to clients across dozens of countries, learning where cross-cultural information gaps cost foreigners real money.
When China started opening up to more international visitors, helloChina was built to send value the other way — to help foreign families land in Shanghai without the chaos that most relocations pay landlords, schools, and visa agents to amplify.
"Parent-first" comes from somewhere concrete: two kids, now 12 and 16, with experience in international, private, and public schools — in both Shanghai and Canada. Every school decision a relocating family is about to make has already been made in this household, twice, with our own kids on the line.
Independent. Paid by clients only. Honest about what we know — and what we don't.
How we get paid
Clients pay us. Schools, landlords, and visa agents do not.
The Shanghai relocation market mostly runs on landlord-pays-the-agent and admissions-office-pays-the-consultant. That makes the agent's loyalty point upstream, not toward you. helloChina rejects all of that.
- No landlord commissions on apartment matches
- No school referral or admissions-office fees
- No visa-agent splits or filer commissions
- Government and 3rd-party fees itemized on every invoice
- Your shortlist, your schools, your decisions — exclusively yours
Our method
School first. Then neighborhood. Then commute. Then apartment. Visa anchors all of it.
Most relocations start with the apartment because it's the easiest thing to picture. That's the most common — and most expensive — sequencing mistake. School choice has the longest application timeline, the most rigid intake windows, and the deepest second-order effects on family life. It needs to anchor the rest.
Our work runs the move in the order that holds up: school → neighborhood → commute → apartment. Visa timing wraps the whole sequence with deadlines, because visa rejections at renewal are the single most common late-stage failure we see.
We sequence it so you don't have to resequence later.
What we are
- A small Shanghai-based advisory
- Independent and parent-first
- Operators with real cross-border business experience
- Honest about scope, timing, and what we don't know
- Paid by clients, in writing, before work begins
What we are not
- A licensed visa agent — we coordinate; licensed partners file
- A real-estate agency — we represent tenants, not landlords
- A corporate relocation provider — we serve self-paying families
- A guarantee — admissions and approvals are made by schools and authorities, not by us
- Paid by anyone other than you
If your move is on the horizon, let's talk.
A 15-minute orientation call is free. We tell you which service fits — or honestly, that we're not the fit, and point you somewhere that is.